


Rounded with a sleep

by Petra



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-09
Updated: 2005-10-09
Packaged: 2019-10-20 19:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17628413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: River visits Simon's dreams because she knows them best of all the crews'.





	Rounded with a sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to kitsune1527 for encouragement and Betty for beta.

River watches Simon dream of being famous. He dreams of saving people, and the people he didn't save. He dreams of being his father, only in a smaller house without so many silences and echoes.

Sometimes River lives in his dreamhouse, as close as they are on _Serenity_. Sometimes she visits.

There are faces that happen again and again in his dreams, and River notices them though Simon does not seem to know them from one night to the next. The woman who keeps his dreamhouse is Kaylee sometimes, and sometimes she's another woman, one River has never met.

River sees the dreamwife in Simon's thoughts sometimes when he's awake, when he's sad. She was his patient and she died.

In the dreams she's alive and beautiful. Sometimes they kiss, and River watches from the hallways of the dreamhouse.

She's not asleep, really, but she's not awake either. She's dreaming it too, but she can move away. She can leave the dream before Simon does.

When there's a River in Simon's dreams who isn't her, she can make her go away and just be there. She's met Simon's dreamchildren, helped them with their work, and heard them call her Auntie River. One of them has her face writ small, and speaks with an air of authority that she half-remembers possessing, once.

Then comes the evening when everyone is ill from Jayne's casserole and the crew's nightmares are too loud for River to sleep. She goes to Simon's dreams because she knows the bad parts of those already; Mal's dreams of war and loss are too fresh, strange, and invasive to bear.

Simon's dreampatient dies in _Serenity_ 's infirmary of a condition he knows how to treat because he doesn't have the right supplies. When the patient dies, it is Inara, bleeding, and Kaylee is there, weeping. Simon leaves the infirmary and walks into his dreamhouse. River follows him and looks for his dreamwife, but she is not there.

A dreamRiver is there already, wearing the same shade of blue that the dreamwife usually does. She looks older than she really does, and twice again as solid. She's leading Simon's dreamdaughter by the hand, and she says, "Now, give papa a hug."

While the dreamdaughter hugs Simon, River takes the place of the dreamRiver.

The girl asks Simon, "Are you all right, Papa?"

Simon says, "Yes. Just a little sad."

The girl says, "I'll cheer you up. I was writing a song today."

"You can play it for me in a few minutes, darling." He stands up again and smiles at River. "I want to talk to Mama."

River looks for the dreamwife, but she isn't there. The dreamdaughter is gone -- off to the piano, or Simon has simply forgotten her.

Simon puts his arm around River's waist, the way he does sometimes when she needs someone close, but then he puts his hand on her shoulder and kisses her, not light, not on the cheek. He kisses her like married, like Zoe and Wash. Like passion and wanting and aching underneath.

"It was a long day," Simon says, and strokes her hair the way he does when she has a nightmare of her own, or when the voices won't go away.

"But now you're home," River says, and it's not because she wants to. It's because Simon wants dreamRiver to say it.

"At last," Simon says, and kisses her again. His hand is warm on her hip, then moves to her thigh, her butt.

She feels hot all over, especially in her belly, and she doesn't know whether it's her, or whether it's dreamRiver. DreamRiver is supposed to kiss Simon again, to pull him past the kitchen and down the hall to the master bedroom.

The master bedroom isn't the master bedroom; it's River's bunk on _Serenity_. Simon doesn't seem to notice. He helps her lie back on the bed and kisses her neck, her cheeks, her lips again.

DreamRiver is supposed to sigh and open to him like a real river, to pull him in and shudder with him. She knows him; she is his wife, and that is how she loves him. RealRiver can feel how it might be. She can love him that way, hold him and take him into herself, as he takes her into his dreams, into his heart.

Give him everything he needs, for once.

If she could only be that strong for him.

RealRiver runs away, out of the dream, from the dreambunk to her real bunk.

She hears/feels Simon wake up and say, "Wo de ma." Then he says, "River?" in his awake-voice and in a moment he's looking at her.

She pretends to be asleep. Her heart is still pounding from his kisses; her belly is still liquid-warm.

"Oh, River," Simon says under his breath. He touches her cheek, then goes back to his bunk.

River goes into Zoe's dreams, where there is killing and screaming, where bombs explode every minute.

Where it's safer.  



End file.
